


Down the Drain With the Falling Rain

by WhisperOfTheDay



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (which by the way utterly destroyed me), (written and posted before i watched uprising), Acute stress disorder, Angst, Drift Side Effects, Gen, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Breakdown, Post-Movie, Self-Hatred, implied suicidal thoughts, kind of, mindmelding, pain everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 06:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14050464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperOfTheDay/pseuds/WhisperOfTheDay
Summary: But you'll come out alrightI know it seems there's no end in sightBut it doesn't mean you can't put up a fightBut you don't-----Sequel to"Tripping Over Thresholds"





	1. Chapter 1

There was a rather insistent, loud knock on the door to his crumpled quarters, followed by "Don't you think we should talk at last?"

Judging by the impudence in Newt's voice he figured he wouldn't be left alone. Hermann had enough energy to roll his eyes heavenward and halfheartedly throw the pen against the table he was sitting at, but not enough to stand up and open the door; didn't want to, and didn't _have_ to, rather.

"You know the code, Newton. As if it matters that you ask."

The second he shouted that, the last number was typed in and a computerized beep rang, the metal door opening with a low creak.

"Yeah I just thought it's high time I started working on my manners," a click of the lock followed as the man soundlessly sliped in like a snake.

"That alone is progress"

"Aha-ha. You're awfully mean, has anybody told you that?"

"Only you. I wonder why is that."

Newt snickered, and kept shuffling near the door, while Gottlieb reached for a tablet and carried on programming, or building a diagram, whatever he was doing minutes prior, all while trying his hardest to show that his lab partner's presence was unwelcome. It didn't seem to work as he heard a metallic creak of springs come from behind him, indicating that the man hadn't found it impolite to sit on his bed. Hermann rolled his eyes again, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Don't you think we should adress a very big.. hippopotamus, or something?" a smirk coloured his voice, and the attempt at lightning the mood was lost on Gottlieb. 

The physicist's mind was too overwhelmed to think of anything to reply with but the truth.

"I think we should, but I don't want to." 

"Well damn too bad, cause you see, you might as well start wanting to cause I'm not leaving." On any other day an approach like that would have woken up a very prideful and obstinate side of Gottlieb, but at that moment what he felt was trapped.

 

"What's going on, Hermann?"

 

Gottlieb turned around in his swivel chair, too drained to fight. Newt was watching him like a hawk. Hermann breathed in loudly, and spoke slowly, looking at the floor, as if reading off it.

"Being still shaken by our shared experience I admit I overreacted, I apologise."

"You still continue to overreact dude. What's with the isolation and ignoring me for two days straight?"

"I'm using scientific method to understand how this.. works-"

"I don't get why you freak out this much," Newt abruptly stood up, starting to pace. "Like, even I know drifting comes with such side effects, and I'm no expert-"

"Jaeger pilots don't hear each other's thoughts after they are disengaged from the Pons, Newton," his stare was unnerving, as well as his argument, but Newt stood his ground.

"Well of course, cause our case was no normal drifting! It was freaky and one of a kind and I'm sure it fucked both of us up a bit but I think we can live with this if it means the world is saved-"

"I can't-"

 

His voice broke and he kept silent, eyes trained on the floor again.

 

Newt felt a knot of concern tie around his insides.

 

"Hey. Dude, we can do this, it'll be fine. I'm sure it'll get less intense in time- it's not that bad."

"It's not the.." Hermann's voice faltered again as he exhaled through the mouth, composing himself to continue, and that shift in behaviour had Newt on the verge of panic. 

"What you..The guilt you feel. I can't handle it. It's too much." 

"..The-..."

 

 

Gottlieb watched his co-worker's posture crumble as a shadow passed over him.

It had felt like unbearable pressure was building up behind that invisible wall that separated their consciousnesses, nonetheless it still held it's ground. But now something broke. 

 

 _He_ broke it. 

 

He could never fix this, he wasn't- he hadn't been cut out for comforting or counselling. But it hurt more and more with each second-

"You should- you have to talk to someone about this." he almost said _please_ , but the anguished look he got from his friend stole his voice.

"And say- and say what? that I-.. That I ki.." A loud shaky sigh broke out of his chest; he looked shattered. "That, that who knows how many people became _collateral damage_ cause I- cause they- because of-"

 

Newton choked on his words, and before Hermann could say his name, he backtracked hurriedly and slammed the door behind.


	2. Chapter 2

Gottlieb was never the one to appreciate, all the more point out irony, though he noticed a lot of it lately, but this situation couldn't be described as anything other than ironic.

He was standing outside the door to Newton's bunk, bracing himself for outrageous swear words and diverse variations of 'go away'. And for bitter ignorance, too.

Over the course of the years working side by side with an emotionally unstable, often insufferable and some might say disturbed individual, Hermann perfected many skills. One being good at letting things slide, ignoring the obvious, " _for the sake of the greater good,_ " he had reasoned. " _For I'm not in any case the one who could make a person feel better."_

Among those acquired talents was also dexterity in throwing chalk over long distances with excellent accuracy; ability to concentrate despite loud music, disgusting smells and disturbing sounds.

Another skill was attentiveness. Helped prevent many accidents beforehand. But it took some time for the benefit of cautiousness to overpower the unpredictability of the subject. 

When situations spiralled out of control, he interfered. He'd help him up off the lab floor, he'd clean the cuts on his arms, he'd give him something to lessen the migraine. And after, he would spend an hour thinking, rethinking and rewatching every second of what happened like a broken record inside his head.

So he tried his damn hardest not to collect more of these upsetting experiences. 

Now he simply couldn't even stand a thought of trying to ignore it. 

And he just went and made it worse, adding himself to the long list of people who Newt was sure he hurt. 

He could do something, he could help, but with action. Talking it out? What was even his plan? What was he going to say? What-

 

"What are you doing here?" a voice from behind the wall of metal asked. By the sound of it Newt was standing right behind the door, maybe even leaning on it, and Hermann must have gotten lost in his thoughts so hadn't heard or.. felt him walk up, providing he could do that now. 

Gottlieb jarred a little, startled, and cleared his throat, strengthing upright decisively.

"Could you open the door?"

"Mhm, could, but won't," came an immediate reply, tone still cold and detached. "What do you want?"

"I need to speak with you." Gottlieb didn't intend on letting distress seep into his voice, but he guessed emotions had control over him now, just like they did with Newton.

_I don't wanna what am i gonna say what is he gonna say he's gonna try to prove me wrong or he's gonna scold me judge me what do i do what do i do let him in no i can't i can't i'll only make it worse-_

 

"Newton," this train of thought the biologist was stuck in started to wear on Gottlieb's nerves, so did standing in the corridor pointlessly. His sudden burst of irritation had an effect, but doubtfully a step towards the situation's improvement, as the downtrodden voice in his head cut off and the door unlocked and opened slowly. 

Newt stepped aside as Hermann limped in. The room was in complete disarray, clothes mixed with books and other belongings on every surface. The lightning was dim, coming from a single lamp on a nightstand which was moved to stand near the desk.

The door's locker clicked and the man strode past him aiming to get to the far corner of the room, his thoughts scattered and indecipherable.

"Newton-"

"You know, I was just sitting in the common room," Newt abruptly turned around, rounding on him. As the dam broke, the flow of words was unstoppable, so overbearing it tuned out all the background noise in their heads. "Drinking something and thinking about the messed up stuff that is happening with us and with the world- crisis and currency collapse, all that, and I just, and I just thought about the past and then the memories- their memories and yours and I then remember Otachi and I think 'Wow it's cool that- that those- I mean not cool but- those fuckers that make them were like, " _Those pests built walls, how fun, let's make some fucking wings then"_ ' and they saw it - the walls, the damn walls- though Mutavore's eyes and _Oh yeah_! It explains why they evolved so fast cause there were those bastards that wheeled them and made them and the hivemind and collective intelligence and I- then I- _and how did Otachi find me this fast?_ And their thoughts I heard, her thought process and I've been seing _double_ , you know, for a second- no, minutes- there in the bunker- I saw myself from _her eyes_ and I then I see it all from their eyes, _everything_ , the Anteverse, the- and them- and I see myself _ki-killing those pilots-"_

A sob broke out of him, he inhaled and looked directly at Hermann, hands shaking as he shrugged and threw palms up, excruciated by having to relive that horrible moment of realisation again. His face was extremely expressive, eyes wide, movements jerky, voice ringing and unsteady, the limit of his endurance overstepped.

"And then it strikes me," Newt's hands fall to the sides, and his body almost gives in under him, but he goes on, unable to stop the tide.

"How did it so awfully h-happen that 3 Jaegers couldn't- cou-.."

 

Tears fell in fat drops on the floor and on his socks.

Newt screwed his eyes shut, hand rising to cover his face. Barely standing, he curled into himself, another arm clasped around his middle painfully, as he cried silently, trapped in his torment.

 

Hermann came back to his senses, hot tears sliding down his face. 

 

 _God_ , he was so scared. 

It was so hard to think. Hermann needed to be able to think. It was the only thing he could hold onto. He can't afford to get swiped away by the flood his friend was drowning in.

He approached Newt cautiously, gently putting a hand on his shoulder. The poor man shrinked further, shaking, unable to contain a quiet choked gasp, but didn't pull away. Hermann carefully and slowly pulled him into a hug, praying it would somehow be enough.

Newt wrapped both arms around him and clinged to his clothes like that was his lifeline. He shook harder, releasing a shaking breath that turned into a quiet wail. But what the next exhale brought was worse.

 

 _"I'm a murderer_."

 

"No. No, you're not. You're not. Those bastards used you. They used your mind. You didn't do it-"

"And all those p-people in the bunker. And everyone in the city-"

Things he couldn't voice transferred openly through the already overloaded bond, and pain only doubled.

"You didn't do it. You only did what you had to- if you didn't there would have been no victory, the world would have ended. Newton- listen to me."

 

_I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorryImsorryImsorry_

 

" _Newt_."

He only cried harder. They were sobs that whacked his whole body, tearing from inside of him with barely contained wails. 

Hermann didn't have to wonder- he knew exactly for how long Newt's been holding it in, and he found himself astounded by the man's power of will, especially considering the fact that he's the most open-minded and emotional person Gottlieb has ever known. It was Hermann's trait of character to shove every feeling into a bottle and throw it in the endless ocean of other worries... 

It was what Newt had tried to do, he must have felt how it works through the Drift, or maybe it passed over to him in the same way the chronic aches had.

As if at that, Newt's knees suddenly buckled, and all of his weight shifted on Hermann. Unable to hold them both upright, in the same second he let go of the cane and tried to gently ease them both to the floor, almost failing. His leg gave off waves of pain up his spinal cord, but the agony that passed through the bond from Newton overlaid it all. 

As his lab partner wept, Hermann struggled to hold himself together, for both their sakes. He felt his grip slip, time and time again failing to separate their thoughts. Emotional strain seemed to strengthen the residual drift, and it became incredibly hard to tell the difference the more of Newt's self-hatred and guilt seeped through.

Let's just say..

 

There are many ways to express one's desire for non-existence.

But there were also thoughts like _will it be like this forever? am i like this for good? will it always hurt this bad_ and _i don't think i can handle it_ and at this point there was no telling who those originate from.

 

Maybe they were doomed to become some sort of human version of the hivemind. One consciousness in two bodies. 

 

Maybe it'd be a fair price for saving humanity.

 

Hermann couldn't accept this. They fought their whole lives, they couldn't give up now. 

He couldn't give up.

"No, no, Newton, listen-"

"We _can't-" fix this fight this live with this i can't-_

"You said it yourself, we can get through it, it'll get better overtime, it will, trust me."

Throughout those 10 hears, the last 5 in particular, Newt has been the ever optimist, the one who had faith, through all struggles and hardships. He might be going through hard times himself, he might think of himself as a failure, helpless, sick, pitiful creature, but still he would never, _never_ say, neither let himself believe, that this fight was pointless.

"Newt, just trust me."

He wouldn't let them give up.

It was time he accepted the link that connected them and let it assist them both, not ruin their lives.

Their personalities had already started mixing, he might as well try to take up Newt's job - _keeping them determined to win and positive they could._

And this wasn't the end of everything, numbers on the desk that told them they'd all die in two days.

This was his best friend in a mental breakdown because he was too good a person to breathe freely when there was blood on his hands.

So Hermann would start with providing a shoulder to cry on.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and 'summary' from Portugal. The Man's 'Number One'
> 
> Thank u for reading! Any form of feedback is deeply appreciated!
> 
> And I'm genuinely sorry.  
> :)


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